The Point: What Prayer Is. . . and Isn’t

November 22, 2017

What about unanswered prayer? For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet with The Point.

In the wake of the shootings in Las Vegas and Southerland Springs, Christians prayed, but quite a few atheists decided that mockery was the best response.

“The murdered victims were in a church,” tweeted one popular atheist. “If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive…”

Prayer-shaming is vile, as I said recently on BreakPoint, but what about those unanswered prayers? Don’t these atheists have a point?

Well, no. Prayer isn’t a magic spell, and God isn’t a genie. We can’t make Him do whatever we want Him to do.

Prayer is a conversation with our Heavenly Father. He wants to hear from us, and He promises good for us, but He doesn’t promise to give us anything we want or to prevent everything bad from happening to us.

In fact, the best Man who ever lived once asked God in a garden, to “remove this cup from me…nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”

The Father heard His Son’s prayer. But thank God He answered it in His time and His way.

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